


Wait, what?

by Omenthia_Arc



Series: Is he or is he not? [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Again, Everyone thinks that Tony is Peter's Dad, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Irondad, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Misunderstandings, Poor Rhodey, SO MUCH FLUFF, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, also a little crack, he is misunderstanding the situation, maybe because, spiderson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omenthia_Arc/pseuds/Omenthia_Arc
Summary: A collection of oneshots of Peter or Tony interacting with each other or other people.Each chapter is it's own story.This belongs to 'Is he or is he not', but you could probably read it as a stand alone, if you're okay with missing a few references to the first story.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Is he or is he not? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118192
Comments: 9
Kudos: 122





	Wait, what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometime after the first chapter of 'Is he or is he not', Rhodey tries to form a conneciton to his nephew. Too bad he misunderstood. Even worse that Tones found out about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed a little break from writing the new chapter for 'Is he or is he not' and this idea was wandering around in my head before I thought of 'or not'. Since it fit so well in here, I adapted it a little and made it a continuation of the first chapter.

Rhodey still hadn’t really wrapped his mind around the whole ‘Tony is a father’ thing. It had just come too out of left field. Normally when a woman had come forward claiming that Tony had gotten her pregnant - and wasn’t that a funny way to say it, as if they hadn’t had anything to do with it - Tones had come to him. This time though, he hadn’t said a word. Maybe James would have wondered if that meant that he had known the test would come back positive, but Tones had said he had no idea that the kid existed, and James believed him.

But no matter what had happened before, Peter Parker was in their life now, part of their family. And James really wanted to be that. Be family to the teenager. As far as he could tell, Peter did not have a lot of family, anymore. An aunt he lived with, and now Tony. Yet another thing that reminded him of the Tones from their days at MIT, though he was not jaded by it. It was obvious that he loved his aunt and Tony dearly, and he was way more familiar with a loving family than Tony had been, which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly hard.

  


Still, he wanted to make sure that Peter knew that he now had him in his corner, too. The only problem was, he wasn’t so great with teenagers. Smaller kids, sure, they were easy to please. Teenagers though, he wasn’t exactly afraid of them - he wasn’t, shut up Tones - but he had no idea where to start with them. His nieces and nephew were easy, he had known them their whole life, which was honestly the only reason he was still talking to them. Mostly he liked to ignore people between the ages of twelve and twenty. This one was important, though. 

At the moment he was standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee and staring at Peter, who was staring at his homework.

Pete had been sitting there for half an hour now, switching fluently between frowning and sighing at the papers in front of him and furiously typing away on his phone. His pen had sat on the table untouched for the most part. James took the last swig of coffee and put the mug down.

This might be the best chance he could get, so it was time to make a move. He made his way over to the kitchen table. A look over his shoulder revealed that he was sitting on math problems. Perfect.

“You need a little help there?” Without waiting for an answer he sat down next to Pete. The boy looked up, a little startled, a little like a deer in headlights, again. He seemed to have a talent for making him look like that.

“What?”

James tapped on the papers. “You’ve been frowning at that for half an hour now. I’m not half bad when it comes to math. Not as good as Tones, obviously, but in his case that might help more than it’ll hurt.”

“Oh, no, Colonel Rhodes, you don’t have to, I-” James interrupted him. 

“I told you, you can call me James. Or Rhodes if you want to.” He normally didn’t let anyone call him that but Tones; not because he disliked the name, but because it was so distinctly labeled as Tones’ nickname for him in his mind. But since this was Tones’ son, it was probably ok. “And I want to help.”

Pete opened his mouth, closed it. Repeated that three times. Finally James just pulled the papers over, so he could look at them a little closer. Then he whistled.

“I can’t remember ever doing this in High School. But I guess Tones did mention that you're going to a school full of little geniuses.”

“I wouldn’t say that Colonel Rhodey-” God, he couldn't believe that this was the son of Tony Stark. He was way too precious for that. “-it’s just a science based school. This homework though. It’s-” 

“College level, yeah. Not even first year stuff, I think. Come on, I’ll help you. We’ll be done in no time.”

He smiled at Peter, and that finally seemed to convince him that it was okay to accept a little help. He put the phone on the table and they got to work.

  


For a few weeks, the whole thing went really well. James would occasionally help Pete with his homework. They would get through it quickly - he really only needed help when the class had started on a new subject, he was brilliant and a quick study. Sadly, James would only take note of how conflicting those facts were after it was too late. 

While working on the problems, they would goof around a little. Pete showed him a few of the videos and photos he had made, he was really a talented kid, and James would tell stories about Tony and him at MIT and all the trouble they got in- just like it was his duty as the fun uncle.

  


The whole thing went sideways as soon as Tones found out, though. He should have known. But in his defense, Pete really hadn’t said a thing.

  


In the end, James couldn’t even remember how they had gotten to the topic. He just remembered Tones teasing him about being scared of teenagers - which he wasn’t. And even if he was, coming from Tony, who was afraid of kids of all ages, it was ridiculous.

That didn’t stop Tones, though. “Really,” he wheezed. Honest to god wheezed. “It’s a wonder you don’t run from the room everytime Pete comes in!”

Aha, now he had him. Because his friend had somehow still not noticed that he was tutoring his son and that was hardly something he could make fun of. 

“Oh yeah? Then why have I been helping him with his homework for the last few weeks?”

Tony stilled. Completely. Then he frowned.  _ Hah.  _ “Got nothing to say to that, do you?” He was grinning. Clearly, he had won this round.

“Yeah I do. Since when are you any good with History?”

“What?”

“The kid has a friend who helps him with the English stuff, so since when are you any good with History?”

“I’m not helping him with history. I’m helping him with his Math problems.”

Tones actually had the nerve to snort. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve been helping him.”

“And I’m telling you he doesn’t need any help with math problems. Jesus Rhodey, you’ve seen him working on the armour, why would you think he would need help with anything science related?”

“I-” he didn’t actually have an answer for that. “He was frowning at his homework, so I offered to help him.”

For a moment there was silence as James watched Tones turn more and more red, before he finally exploded into obnoxiously loud laughter.

He took ages to calm down again enough to talk coherently. Then, still a little out of breath, swiping actual tears from his eyes, he managed to choke out, “He frowns at his homework because he’s bored. His teacher is trying to give him more difficult stuff, but he’s an idiot. He just doesn’t realise how good Peter is at math.” He looked like he was suffocating with the effort to get the words out. “ Apparently he’s not the only one,” he tacked on, and then he was bowled over laughing again. He didn’t stop for a while. 

  


That evening, when Pete came over for the weekend, James had had enough. Tones had started giggling at random throughout the whole day and he really wanted to get to the bottom of this. If Pete really didn't need the help - which, in hindsight it was  _ obvious  _ that he didn’t - then why hadn’t he told him so?

He could see that maybe he had overrun him a little that first day, but he had thought that since then they had become close. At least close enough that he would have told him that he didn’t need any help. Instead he had gotten the impression that Pete had frowned extra hard when he noticed Rhodey, as if he wanted the help but didn’t want to ask for it.

  


James knew immediately when Pete came up, even though he wasn’t in the living room. But Tones was and he started laughing again immediately. By the time James made it to the living room, Pete looked wholly confused by Tony, who was leaning on his shoulder, still laughing. He looked a little relieved when James came into sight. 

“What’s going on?”

James threw a look over at Tones, but he was still useless. He probably should have thought about how he was actually going to talk to Pete about this. Too late, now it was time to grit his teeth and just get to it. 

“How come you didn’t tell me you didn’t actually need my help with your homework?”

“Oh.” Now Pete looked a mix of befuddled and embarrassed. One look at Tones and it was mostly just embarrassed as he grew almost as red in the face as his dad.

Speaking of, Tones had finally calmed down enough to be able to talk again. Pity. 

“Was your homework really so boring that you pawned it off on an actual rocket scientist?” 

For a moment James was worried that he had actually fallen for a trick - Tones would never let him live that down. The man was still giggling a little.

“God, I haven’t laughed like that in years. Why didn’t you tell me, Pete? This is hilarious.”

Now Peter looked really embarrassed. “Because you would have told him. And then he would have stopped.” The boy was studiously avoiding looking at either of them, studying his shoes like they contained the secret to one of the Millenium Prize Problems.

It took James a moment to decipher what he meant to say. When he finally figured out the meaning, he wanted to go over and hug the kid. He was definitely way more precious than any child of Tony had any right to be. 

He was stubbornly ignoring the memories of a much, much younger version of the laughing arsehole, being almost as precious right after they had met, before he had actually got it through his thick skull that James wouldn’t be easy to get rid off.

Instead, because he had the impression that that would only have embarrassed the teenager more, he went over and pried a still cackling Tones from his shoulder. Leading his friend over to and dumping him on one of the couches, he couldn’t help but think that he would probably have aching muscles from all the laughing tomorrow. James grinned. 

“Don’t worry, Pete. We’ll find something else to do together.” He couldn’t resist throwing his arm over Pete’s shoulder, dragging him down so that he was sitting between his uncle and his dad. “You can talk to me, alright? I’ll have your back. That’s what family is for, right?” Pete was still red in the face, but he was grinning really wide, too.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Okay. Now what should we watch while that old man tries to get his breath back?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Mellinium Prize Problems were originally seven unsolved math problems. Solving one will get you a prize money of one million USD. Only one of the problems was solved to date, by the Russian Grigori Perelman, who actually declined the prize money.  
> (This knowledge was brought to you by a quick Google search of 'unsolvable math problem')


End file.
